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Thyme-honey manipulation!!!!! Opinions

I have my bees in a place where there are too much thymes.
Thyme honey is very expensive , and there is a good market for it.
This year I have thought of a new manipulation, in order to collect the most of thyme honey from every hive.
But I need your opinions , if it is going to work, or if there is a trap I cannot see.
The flow starts about 10-15 of May and lasts about a month, if the weather is not extremely hot.
Three or four days before the flow start, I want to take the Queen out of each hive, with 2 frames of brood and 2 frames of honey and pollen, and make a split. The split will stay in the bee-yard, so all the foragers will return to the mother-hive. Next day the mother- hive, will go to the thymes.
The mother hive will raise a new queen, and there will be no brood for about a month, so all the nectar collected will be stored as honey. Am I right? After the honey harvest, I will recombine the split with the mother –hive.
Do you see any problem in this manipulation?
Thank you all in advance for your answers.

Re: Thyme-honey manipulation!!!!! Opinions

I plan on doing cut away splits this year. I will not be combining them after the flow, but will let the nuc grow. This will increase the honey flow and reduce swarming and give me a nuc.

If your sole purpose is for honey production and you do not want another hive, you might just want to cage the queen 8 days before the flow. That way most of the brood will be capped before the flow, and all the brood will hatch in time to help.

Re: Thyme-honey manipulation!!!!! Opinions

I think it is a wonderful idea to do anything possible to maximize your thyme flow production. I have eaten a few jars of thyme honey from Greece and I rate it as the best honey I ever tasted. Exquisite is the word that comes to mind. Drakos, if your plan works well and you have too much, and can export to the U.S., I would love to buy some.
Laurence

Re: Thyme-honey manipulation!!!!! Opinions

A queenless hive raising a queen will store more honey because they are not feeding a large and growing number or brood in my experieince. Bees use an awful amount of their production raising kids. I think it is true for our species too. I never managed to store any money til the kids were raised.

Re: Thyme-honey manipulation!!!!! Opinions

Depending on how many hives you have, consider leaving a couple hives alone. That way you can compare the results of your splitting to what a normally managed hive would produce. You'll get a basis to determine if you want to do that again next year. This way you know what % change in yield you have due to your manipulation.

Re: Thyme-honey manipulation!!!!! Opinions

Originally Posted by Erik the Red

Depending on how many hives you have, consider leaving a couple hives alone. That way you can compare the results of your splitting to what a normally managed hive would produce. You'll get a basis to determine if you want to do that again next year. This way you know what % change in yield you have due to your manipulation.

Re: Thyme-honey manipulation!!!!! Opinions

An off-topic question about thyme honey ...

Do your hives have problems with mites? I read that some commercial mite control products are based on an extract from thyme. Do you still have to treat for mites when your bees are making thyme honey?